Clamped Angelfish fins

[ILikeFish1]

Recently I set up a 75 gallon with the intent to keep 4 angelfish and lots of other smaller fish such as zebra danios and tetras

about a week after the angelfish went in I added the other fish and the angelfish started acting weird. One of them has clamped fins and kept skimming the surface an unusual amount until he couldn’t keep his balance and died the next day. Eventually another one did the same thing and now i have just two left and one of them has their fins clamped.

I thought it could’ve been stress from not enough oxygen so I added a air stone in but it didn’t seem to change anything. Not sure what to do to, anything helps.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Please read through the "unhealthy fish" sticky and provide as much information as you are able.

https://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f17/before-posting-about-unhealthy-fish-read-this-32451.html

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Post pictures of the sick fish.

Do not add any more fish to the tank until we work out what is going on.

-------------------

BASIC FIRST AID FOR FISH
Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. Post the results in numbers here.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week or until the problem is identified. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

 

[Andy Sager]

Recently I set up a 75 gallon with the intent to keep 4 angelfish and lots of other smaller fish such as zebra danios and tetras

about a week after the angelfish went in I added the other fish and the angelfish started acting weird. One of them has clamped fins and kept skimming the surface an unusual amount until he couldn’t keep his balance and died the next day. Eventually another one did the same thing and now i have just two left and one of them has their fins clamped.

I thought it could’ve been stress from not enough oxygen so I added a air stone in but it didn’t seem to change anything. Not sure what to do to, anything helps.

Do look at all the water parameters to confirm they are stable but your symptoms and timing are very similar to the disease my Angelfish hatchery caught back in the 1980s which was dubbed Angelfish Aids. Clamped fins, skimming the surface for air, greyish sheen to the body..... high mortality rate. Most medicines were ineffective and unfortunately the mortality rate is high. The treatment for this was ( and is still recommended) Metronidazole and Malachite green. The fish should be isolated in a hospital tank for treatment and any other cichlid you may have may catch it so they too should be medicated.
If you can not get these 2 medications, you can use the following in combination:
1) API's Super Ick cure and Prazipro
or
2) API's Super Ick Cure and API's General Cure
or
3) Microbe Lift’s BSDT and PraziPro

Choose just one combination. Do not mix the combinations together.

You'll also want to keep the temperature to below 78 degrees F.

Keep any utensils you use ( i.e. Nets, siphoning tubing, containers) separate and do not use them in you main tank again until thoroughly sterilized.

Lastly, keep in mind that should your fish survive, they will be "carriers" for the rest of their lives. Any drop in water quality in the future can restart this whole process again. In the future, any Angelfish you get from the source you got these should be quarantined for at least a month to make sure they are not carriers as well. You'll have the treatment knowledge for a faster response should they too succumb.

Hope this helps.